Civil Disobediance

Civil disobedience has a long and venerable history where citizens to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government, particularly when they are seen as capricious or corrupt. It was central to Ghandi's campaign to liberate India from British rule and again with the Civil Rights movement in the United States with the campaign to end segregation. In Scotland the resistance against the Poll Tax (Community Charge) introduced by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in 1989 is the most notable recent example, though there is a low-level campaign against the television licence fee in protest against the daily bias against Scotland that can be readily seen on BBC channels. As for the future? Who knows. There is certainly a level of frustration at the lack of democratic representation but the first signs of a new campaign might actually come from citizens opposing the Scottish Government's campaign to expand the rights of transsexuals at the expense of women with the proposed Gender Recognition Act which would see former safe-spaces for women made to open their doors to men.